I Want a Divorce (1940) - So, Marriage Isn't Meant To Be Fun?!

It takes a brave celebrity couple to star in a movie called I Want a Divorce, especially if they are married in real life and the subject of regular magazine coverage regarding their glamorous relationship. Joan Blondell and Dick Powell were one such couple and were half way though an eight year marriage when the movie came out in 1940. Luckily the reviews were so bad that the film quickly disappeared into obscurity to the point that when they eventually divorced in 1944 it was a long forgotten footnote rather than a punchline. Still, a married couple even entertaining the notion of a movie with such a title in the notoriously relationship fickle world of Hollywood was surely just asking for trouble.

I Want a Divorce is a strange little film that knows exactly what it wants to say but can’t settle on the right way to go about saying it. It advertises itself as a rip-roaring comedy (“A Lovable Wise-Cracking Comedy Drama!!” declares the poster) but in execution resembles a particularly pious Public Service Announcement. It’s ninety minutes of half-hearted attempts at comedy competing with a dreary, bad tempered atmosphere of moralising in which every character is affected in some way by the demon divorce and most come out of it losing someone they hold dear, if not more.

The mood is set with the first scene as Joan Blondell’s character Geraldine walks through the divorce courts looking for the room where her sister is campaigning to ditch her husband and have the sort of carefree lifestyle she has always desired. As Joan walks through the halls we meet a litany of miserable broken families, from a young girl screaming “You think dad’s a heel but that doesn’t make me believe it!” (Her mother’s touching answer: “Oh shut up!”), to a little boy wailing “I don’t wanna live with you, I want my mommy!”). When she arrives at the right courtroom we see her sister Wanda, played with impeccable disdain by Gloria Dickson proclaim that she wants a divorce because her husband’s occasional criticism has caused her public humiliation (“He also criticised my clothes!”). Her lawyer sums up that this despicable act has caused her “great mental anguish, seriously endangering (her) health”. Divorce granted, next case!!

All that was needed was perhaps the wailing sounds of motherless babies cast aside by their divorce happy parents accompanied by the sounds of lawyers counting their money and the intended picture of a modern day Bedlam would be achieved. Divorce is bad. Divorce breaks up families. Divorce makes everyone miserable. Okay, we get it. So, when exactly does the lovable wise-cracking comedy start?

Next we meet the rest of Geraldine and Wanda’s family, namely their grandparents and Wanda’s son David. These characters are used to hammer home the message even more as the grandparents have been married forever and have endless nuggets of homespun wisdom to impart about the sanctity of marriage, while the son is supposed to be an adorable young scamp (he's not) whose innocence is in peril by the actions of his selfish mother. Even the now ex-husband David (played with a dignified restraint by Conrad Nagel) comes across as a good and loving parent brought down by Wanda’s actions and lifestyle. Inappropriately, Grandma starts her sermonising the minute the sisters get back from court, telling Geraldine "Divorces don't take long these days. What should I be saying to her, 'Sorry, congratulations or many happy returns?'" When she is told that it seems she got up on the wrong side of bed this morning she replies "Yes and it's the same bed I've slept for nearly 50 years. And with the same man". She's a delightful character.

After that the comedy portion finally begins, and it really wasn’t worth the wait. Joan Blondell and Dick Powell co-starred successfully in many movies during the 30s but for whatever reason, by the time this film was made they have little or no chemistry on screen. Joan tries her best, but Dick (as up and coming lawyer Alan MacNally) just seems to be going through the motions (honestly, he looks so bored) and it doesn’t help that the script is so leaden for the majority of the movie that there is nothing for them to work with. Anyway, events conspire to make our stars meet and soon they are courting, everything is wonderful and before we know it they decide to get married. Fittingly the ceremony itself is a rather mute affair as the camera pans round the group of friends and family in the church staring furtively as the priest intones the solemn wedding vows to the blank faced couple. It’s the furthest thing from the joyful celebration of union, but I guess that’s the point – marriage is a serious business. Divorce has even taken the fun out of getting married!

Just in case you really haven’t picked up on the message the movie is trying to impart, Geraldine and Alan are getting on swimmingly as newlyweds until Alan gets offered a chance to make more money and rise up the ranks at his law firm by becoming (gasp) a divorce lawyer! From there the marriage immediately falls apart, and the legal eagles start circling the wagons. In the end it takes the suicide of Wanda, inconsolable after realising the mistake she made, to wake everyone up to the fact that divorce destroys lives (all part of the lovable wise-cracking comedy of course). Finally, while Geraldine is in shock, numb at the fact that her sister has died, Grandma decides to monologue about how it was all Wanda’s fault and that “She broke a promise she made to the Lord God almighty. She started something that grew big and evil and it finally was too much for her”. Grandma continues in this vein, oblivious to the human cost of the ensuing drama, and indeed her own family. The incessant nagging must have worked though, as the couple reconcile and order restored.

Obviously, times and attitudes have changed since 1940 and divorce is now no longer a scourge of society but one would hope that even back then people would be rolling their eyes at the incessant, heavy handed lecturing in the movie. The movie shows the worst excesses of the Production Code in action, pushing message at the cost of entertainment, and even advertising itself as a screwball comedy to do so. Quite what Dick Powell and Joan Blondell were doing in such nonsense is difficult to understand. Apparently they got a very good financial incentive to come to Paramount but it doesn't appear that bothering about a good script was included in the deal.

The movie is fascinating mostly for how far it hammers the point home about divorce and its destructive effects. From the opening court scene where we see the broken families and hear the obviously fabricated testimony of the selfish plaintiff, to the juxtaposition of the happily married grandparents from an earlier simpler time (I guess divorce was only invented in the 20^th century) the message is stay together at all costs. In the key line of the movie, Grandma tells Geraldine “Getting married isn’t the important thing, it’s staying married that counts”. In the movie, marriage is about the long run and the institution is the most important thing. It’s understandable that they are trying to tell young people to stick it out throughout good times and bad but the inference is also that if you are stuck in a broken, unhappy marriage that it’s your lot in life (and probably your own fault) and you should just grin and bear it. That combined with the frequent assertion that all a woman needs to be kept in line is a swift slap (and that men too can be kept in line with a fist or some flying crockery) gives the impression of a society where being single sounds the best option. 

If the picture given of the ideal marriage is bad, then the view of divorce is even worse. There are two things in particular that the movie saves its disdain for, two things that it considers the lowest of the low. Firstly it’s divorce lawyers, who seem to be the pushers in this scenario, planting the seed of doubt in the minds of the married and making it so, so easy to take a trip to Splitsville, all the while gleefully pocketing the cash. When Alan and Geraldine get married, the nuptials go south the minute he decides to take up with the devil’s brigade of the divorce lawyer.  Though he is saved from this soul destroying fate in the end, he still feels the need to repent his sins and convert his occupation to good, becoming a “Child Conciliation“ lawyer and thus putting broken families back together for a living (presumable whether they wanted to or not). I hope it’s enough to pay the bills.

The second thing that raises the ire of the movie is women. Or rather women who dare to divorce. The movie seems at pains to point out how the lowest thing a woman can do is file for divorce and break up the sacred family unit. Though to be fair, no one would want to be married to Wanda in the first place as she is vain and selfish and concocts the divorce plan to spend less time at home and more in the nightclub. In reality people get divorced for all sorts of complicated reasons but it’s telling here that the reason is portrayed as almost entirely the fault of the woman and everyone else suffers for her sins.

However, lest we forget I Want a Divorce is supposedly a comedy and does spend at least a small proportion of its running time attempting to raise a smile. Unfortunately because the script can’t decide if it’s a searing melodrama or knockabout comedy the result is that it’s successful at neither. Luckily, despite the miserable atmosphere and the fact it looks for all intents and purposes like a Monogram B picture, it is saved but a decent cast of reliable faces. As mentioned earlier, neither Joan Blondell nor Dick Powell are at their best here. It’s 1940, so Joan Blondell is firmly in her brown hair and big shoulder pads phase (and she wears some extraordinary examples here – I’m surprised she could get through doors!) but there is the occasional flourish of the charm that made her famous. In particular a scene where she asks Grandma about love while waiting for her new beau to arrive (and fetchingly dressed in a big hat and checked farm girl outfit). She sighs dreamily as Grandma begins once again to lecture about marriage then suddenly her face lights up with innocent charm when she spots Dick Powell approaching. With her big round eyes and wide smile, for just a brief moment it’s 1934 again. The simple problem with the comedic sections of the movie is that they are not funny, nor do they have any remotely comic situations for Joan and Dick to enact. There’s no one liners, no snappy dialogue and really nothing for the stars to wring some laughs from. It’s as if the romance sub plot exists to kill time until the punchline (ie divorce) and thus allow the movie to go back to preaching.

The supporting cast do at least provide some amusing moments, with entertaining appearances from Dorothy Burgess (a brief but wildly over the top turn as a Mexican Spitfire type), Louise Beavers (a sensitively played maid) and a genuinely funny cameo from Roscoe Ates as a summons server. However it’s the presence of Frank Fay as their jaded friend Jeff that steals the show. I never thought I’d say this but (whisper) Frank Fay is by far the best thing in this movie. Obviously it’s no secret that in real life Frank Fay was a despicable and reviled human being, an egotistical, alcoholic, racist wife beater, but if it’s possible to put that aside (and granted it is very difficult) he’s rather wonderful in I Want a Divorce. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t had a dramatic part in a movie in close to eight years, or that he had finally begun to accept that he was no longer the star he once was, but his character has a melancholy demeanour that is quite compelling. He is used entirely for comic relief and constantly on the run from his crazy wife but his almost punch drunk wistfulness sets him apart from the rest of the cast. Maybe it was the effects of the booze but he delivers his lines in an unsteady manner, with a twinkling detachment of a man who has lived life and takes each day as it comes. It could equally be seen as a terrible performance given by a man the shadow of this former self or an actor coming to terms with his mistakes and finally showing a degree of vulnerability. Either way he’s the most memorable thing about the movie, which granted, isn’t saying much.

All in all, I Want a Divorce isn’t a good film, but it’s strangely fascinating for its mismatched mix of genres and tone, the odd lack of chemistry between the married leads and the unexpected charm of a much despised former star. Most of all though the endless moralising and preaching about the sacred vows of marriage and the utter disdain at the mere concept of divorce (and especially those who facilitate it) results in a tone more like the “Red Menace” movies of the late 40s and early 50s. As ever, it was a bit rich for Hollywood to lecture anyone of the sanctity of marriage, but it’s always been a 'do as I say not as I do' type of place. Nonetheless the heavy handedness of the whole enterprise may not particularly unusual for the time but is unintentionally amusing now. Sadly, it's the sort of subject one would expect to see as a short film or perhaps as a programmer produced by one of the Poverty Row studios, not a Paramount movie with two major stars. As such it's a complete waste of Joan Blondell’s talents at a time where she really could have done with a career boost.

However, before I pack my bags and head to Reno there is a curious postscript to this whole affair. Despite the film getting terrible reviews and flopping at the box office, someone, somewhere decided that the general public needed to know even more about the evils of divorce. Thus was born, I Want a Divorce the radio show, starring Joan Blondell! Stay tuned until next time and we shall lift the lid on the sequel of sorts that no one really asked for.

God's Gift to Women (1931) - Louise Brooks, Joan Blondell and Laura La Plante: Three Women Fight Over Frank Fay, One Wins

Frank Fay was a fast talking Broadway star who was snapped up by Warner Brothers for a string of talkies at the dawn of sound. The hope was that with his immense stage popularity and gift of the gab the studio could make him into an attractive new star to give a boost to the fledgling technology. Sadly, his personality didn’t catch on big with the movie going public and by the time he made God’s Gift to Women in 1931 we find him near the end of his contract, looking tired and exhausted after a rough couple of years in Hollywood. By all accounts Fay wasn’t the easiest of men to like, as he was known to be incredibly egotistical and his marriage to Barbara Stanwyck was a tumultuous affair which did his standing no favours. A lot of his early films miscast him as a ladies’ man, and God’s Gift to Women is no different. Here he plays Toto, a modern day Don Juan, with an insatiable eye for the ladies and a reputation as an incorrigible rake. Despite this he somehow manages to fall in love with demure society girl Diane (Laura La Plante) and he resolves to mend his ways. A sudden life threatening heart ailment appears to seal the deal, but unfortunately his many previous girlfriends have other plans and continue to fight over him (well, he is God’s gift to women…)

So there you have it, the set up for an entertaining Pre Code bedroom farce, full of knockabout comedy, racy one liners, daring fashions and familiar faces. However, in reality the movie just doesn’t quite work. It may be the fact that Frank Fay just doesn’t suit the role, or that he talks incessantly to the point of distraction, or that the whole set up is just too preposterous to take seriously. It’s a fun, diverting movie but nothing to write home about (or in a blog for that matter). Based on that, the movie would probably deserve to be largely forgotten and consigned to gather dust in a darkened vault surrounded by Frank Fay’s other pictures.

And that would be its fate if not for, in hindsight a very interesting bit of casting that keeps the film alive in the minds of film fans. For not only does God’s Gift to Women contain one of the few featured sound roles of Louise Brooks, but it also has Joan Blondell in her sixth feature film appearance. And to make it even more interesting, they appear together! And they wrestle each other on a bed! Sometimes the random cast lists thrown together in the days of the contract studio players result in some very odd and interesting pairings. Often, when past and present collide you get to see stars of different eras or on different career trajectories briefly work together. Vilma Banky and Edward G. Robinson in A Lady to Love, Al Jolson and Harry Langdon in Hallelujah, I’m a Bum!, Clara Bow and Jean Arthur in The Saturday Night Kid or even John Gilbert and the Three Stooges in The Captain Hates the Sea are examples of this intriguing clash of eras that spring to mind but there are surely many more.

In God’s Gift to Women we have the effervescent spirit of the Flaming Youth meeting the epitome of Depression era sass, and stuck in the middle is pretty but dull Laura La Plante. The result is a film with three actresses all at different stages of their careers and going in three entirely different directions. Here the past, the present and the future co-exist in the movie in the forms of Louise Brookes, Laura La Plante and Joan Blondell respectively.
 

By the time she filmed God’s Gift to Women, Laura La Plante had enjoyed a film career for over a decade, attaining great success as a silent leading lady for Universal. She is perhaps best remembered in silent pictures for the 1927 version of The Cat and the Canary, directed by Paul Leni. When sound arrived she made a fairly seamless transition, first starring in the popular part talkie Show Boat. She continued making films for Universal, but after leaving them in 1930 she bounced around the studios for a couple of years before retiring in 1935. In God’s Gift to Women she is still a top billed star and a leading lady, but there is the distinct feeling that time and the competition is catching up with her. A lot of silent stars seem to have been given a run of sound films as a sort of courtesy since they were stars (providing their voice was good enough). Actresses like Olive Borden and Billie Dove made a string of sound films as headline attractions then either moved down the playbill or disappeared altogether. Laura La Plante lasted a bit longer than many other silent stars but on the strength of God’s Gift to Women it’s clear that she was on borrowed time. She’s perfectly acceptable in her role as society girl Diane but she lacks that certain something to make her special. Her voice is good, apart from a tendency to over enunciate her lines, and she handles the comedy fairly well but nothing about her stands out. She is one of many leading ladies of the Pre Code era whose pretty, aristocratic and virtuous nature began to look a bit old fashioned once the Depression fully kicked in. When you consider the new talent coming up in 1931 as competition it’s easy to understand why early retirement was a sensible and dignified option for Laura La Plante and many like her.
 

On the other hand, Louise Brooks’ career was on the downward spiral by 1931 having returned from Europe to the Hollywood scene she loathed so much. I must admit at this point that whilst I understand Brooks’ importance as an icon of style and independent spirit, as an actress I don’t see what all the fuss is about. When she’s lit and filmed correctly she does have a transcendent beauty but out of this gaze she has little else going for her compared to many of her contemporaries (especially someone like Colleen Moore). A great star is a star wherever they go but in Louise Brooks’ case, she is only good when handled correctly and that to me is a limiting factor in her legacy. Additionally I always get the feeling that making films in Hollywood was such a chore to her and there are certainly times in God’s Gift to Women where she looks positively embarrassed to be slumming it in such nonsense. She plays Florine, one of Toto’s many girlfriends and she really only has one notable scene. Under doctor’s orders Toto is to stay away from women in order to stop him having an aneurism. She arrives to find that her rivals are also there and ends up having a cat fight with Joan Blondell and Yola d’Avril. Her initial appearance is filmed in profile, with her face almost turned away from the camera and her famous bob covered by a hat. It’s in these scenes, her signature look obscured, that you realise that if you didn’t know who she was she wouldn’t be making as much of an impression. She certainly has some charms but whether she truly thought the whole enterprise was beneath her or she was just tired of the Hollywood rat race, it’s clear her heart isn’t in it. However there is a reaction shot at the end of the scene of just her face in close up that is filmed perfectly and for a few seconds the familiar Louise Brookes look emerges. However, it’s a fleeting glimpse of a star whose best work was firmly behind her.
 

Lastly we have Joan Blondell playing Fifi, another in Toto’s harem of beautiful women. The film finds Blondell less than a year into her movie career and in her highest placing so far on the playbill (3rd). She was still eight months away from her breakout performance in Blonde Crazy but was steadily climbing up the ladder as a fresh young face. Whereas Laura La Plante represented the typically conservative and virtuous leading ladies of the mainstream cinema thus far, and Louise Brooks a reflection of the high living Jazz Age flapper that was extinguished by the Wall Street crash, Joan Blondell gives us a glimpse of the modern woman of the 1930s. Although Frank Fay is fast talking and fairly animated throughout the film, he looks too middle aged and brings a tired vaudeville sensibility to the movie. In contrast, Joan Blondell is bursting with a fresh, new type of energy. In her first scene she lights up the screen with her big eyes, short blonde hair, wide smile and snappy delivery, and her pep and effervescence prove to be a lively interruption to the creaky old bedroom farce. She looks modern, talks modern and acts modern and seems at this early stage of her career to be well on the way to finding the screen persona that would define her in Gold Diggers of 1933. It’s actually amazing how charismatic she is despite such a lack of film experience and screen time. Just like Louise Brooks’ character, she visits Toto to nurse him back to health and bursts in wearing a patterned, figure hugging dress and throwing herself on him. Compared to Brooks and Yola d’Avril, who make the same sort of entrance, hers is the most memorable and energetic. She then shows an excellent grasp of comic timing (something Laura La Plante struggles with at times) saying that her husband “is ferocious when he’s jealous. He kills people” The pause and the delivery of the punchline combined with a wide eyed look towards Fay at just the right moment is a brilliant piece of business and far more skilful than much of the stilted delivery and hammy acting throughout most of the film. The point is, that fledgling star Blondell is a real breath of fresh air in the movie and has future star written all over her.
 

Of course all this is with the benefit of hindsight. Contemporary audiences watching the movie would have accepted La Plante as a proper star player, may have remembered Louise Brooks as a star from the past and would have thought Joan Blondell was one of many up and coming young actresses that were regularly appearing on the screen. However, knowing what we know now, we see the three stars in a considerably different light. Joan Blondell obviously has charisma and star quality in spades and her appearance fits into the story of her hard working rise to the top of 30s cinema. Laura La Plante’s career has sadly now been largely forgotten and if she is remembered at all it is for her silent work, not her polite but dull sound roles. And Louise Brooks is an eternal icon, far more famous than her actual screen career ever deserved, but her story and life as a Hollywood free spirit continues to strike a chord with successive generations. Her appearance in God’s Gift to Women is a footnote in her career, though due to her fame reviews of the movie nowadays seem to centre on her performance, uneventful though it is.

When all is said and done, of the three women, Joan Blondell owns the movie. Hers is a dynamic, sarcastic and peppy character that would highlight the way for a decade of hard working chorus girls, quick witted screwball heroines and down of their luck ladies of ill repute. She is effortlessly of her time, and the other two would quickly be left behind as tastes changed. One star fell because she couldn’t keep up with the new generation, and the other because she didn’t want to. In the middle of these women was Frank Fay, whose own career was on borrowed time (for about twenty years at least).

God’s Gift to Women is, like I said, a nice little diversion highlighted by some dream casting. It’s not often you get to see Louise Brooks and Joan Blondell wrestle on a bed in nurses' uniforms, but it happened, and the world is a better place for it. Watching the scene it’s interesting to note that Joan Blondell really puts her heart into the catfight and appears far more animated (and possibly violent) than her co-stars. Louise Brooks looks awkward and embarrassed and Laura La Plante isn't even in the scene (she's far to well mannered). And in a way that works as a representation of their respective careers by 1931 (of course, in the long run Louise Brooks' fame outshone everyone but that’s another story). The lesson to be learned is that when the old stars start to fade, there's always a fresh and eager new face to take their place. Sometimes it’s survival of the fittest, and in 1931 Joan Blondell was the new breed clawing her way up, and Louise Brooks, Laura La Plante and Frank Fay, in the cruel jungle of Hollywood with its fickle and precarious ladder of fame were about to run out of time.